Source · Select Committees · Justice Committee
Recommendation 32
32
Deferred
Paragraph: 178
Require MoJ to publish plan and timeline for collecting primary carer data.
Recommendation
It continues to be a concern that the MoJ does not know how many women in prison are primary carers. Without this data, it is not possible to assess the specific needs of mothers in prison, or how well these needs are being met. We note that the MoJ is considering how to improve the central collection of this information by making changes to the questions in the Basic Custody Screening Tool. The MoJ should set out what work it is doing to ensure that vital information, such as this, is collected and published. It should also set out an indicative timeline for the collection and publication of this data.
Government response summary AI-generated
The government accepted the recommendation but did not set out work or a timeline for collecting and publishing data on women in prison who are primary carers. Instead, it described commitments to improve job opportunities and employment support for women, detailing the roles of the New Futures Network and Employment Brokers, and noting that 10 Prison Employment Leads and 6 Employment Hubs are operational in women's prisons as of September 2022.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Paragraph Reference:
178
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
We accept this recommendation. Changes were made in February 2022 to the Basic Custody Screening Tool (BCST) which is used to collect this information on reception into prison. We are awaiting early indications of figures to determine whether the self-declared nature of this information provides a clear understanding of the scale of the problem. The Prison Strategy White Paper also committed to work with OGDs to improve our collective understanding of the overall number of children affected by parental incarceration. Through the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) programme, we are investigating opportunities for improved data sharing, including data held by other government organisations, to allow us to better identify prisoners with children. BOLD is a £19.7m Shared Outcomes Fund project, which seeks to enable better evidenced, joined- up and more effective cross government services through linking data across government.
Read the full response on Parliament ↗